Photographer's Note

One saturday afternoon, mid-november 2000, after one year in Angola, I had my little habits with my friends here. Get a fish and a beer along the sea in a small restaurant in the "Ilha de Luanda" area.

At one moment, my attention was caught by a big crowd movement, something quite unusual on this part of town. I took my camera and merged in the crowd to have a look at something I had never seen before : old women and men had brought some food on the beach and were animating a kind of ceremony.

That was something completly unexpected as Angola lost most of its tradition. The marxist governement adopted for more than 15 years put a lot of energy in extracting the Angolan people from their african roots and I'm pretty sure that's one of the african countries which lost most of its traditional languages (ovimbudu and kimbudu if I remember well) and history. Indeed, in its fight against the UNITA led by Jonas Savimbi, the governement used the backing of Cuban and sovietic militars for years which lead the President Dos Santos to rely on a communist system for several years.

A long time after that, I made the connection between this ceremony and what is really popular in Brazil at the end of the year. The people relying on the fishing economy make these offering to the Sea and its various Gods so as to ensure the best Fishing possible in the future.

I recropped the original picture so as to exclude few distracting elements, adjusted curves, unsaturated a little bit the picture and applied various blurring and sharpening masks.

steven, very nice shot:-) i like the fact that you are showing us some human characters in your photograph;-) quite new for you , isn't it? the sharp focus on the 4 women in the foreground gives a good base for this picture , and their position tells us something about the movement going on (dance) in this scene. pity though that you had this kid's head just before you to hide the feet of the woman on the left hand side;-)

This is a great photo and a wonderful note. I just think that it is unfortunate about the top of the head in the bottom of the picture. I guess there is nothing you can really do to get rid of it. Other than that it is a wonderful picture!